Aussies sidestep fixed internet connection for mobile

The ABS reported a 7 per cent increase in the number of mobile wireless broadband subscribers to 5.9 million, between December and June.

More Australians accessed the internet via mobile wireless broadband connections in the last six months to June than ever before, the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ latest internet activity report has found.

The ABS reported a 7 per cent increase in the number of mobile wireless broadband subscribers to 5.9 million, between December and June, excluding mobile handset subscribers.

Out of the 12 million overall internet subscribers, fixed line DSL connections only increased by 2 per cent, to 4.6 million and fibre connections grew from 37,000 to 52,000 over the same period, while dial-up declined.

In a statement the company rolling out Labor’s $37.4 billion national broadband network said the figures proved Australians wanted the NBN and its fibre optic cabling solution.

“The nation’s appetite for 100 [megabits per second] broadband services has more than doubled over the past year,” it said. “The amount of high definition video being watched by Australians is expected to grow by more than ten times by 2020.

“So upgrading our fixed lines will be vital to keeping up with this ever-growing demand.”

While NBN Co’s statement did not provide the subscriber figures, ABS data showed the 100Mbps category being described was the smallest segment recorded.

Of the 12.036 million internet users covered by the ABS report as of June 2012, 43,000 used 100Mbps plans compared with 4.1 million on plans with speeds of 8Mbps to 24Mbps.

The ABS figures measure the number of subscribers rather than the number of users where a single subscriber may have multiple accounts with one or more internet service providers.

Foad Fadaghi, research director at Telsyte, said the numbers were consistent with the analyst’s estimates for mobile broadband uses not including devices.

“Telsyte estimate that there were around 5 million mobile broadband - dongle and fixed 3G/4G modem services - in operation at the end of June.

“There’s many more people than there are establishments, so as people adopt things rather than connections to a building, you’re going to see personal connections to the internet always exceeding connections to buildings,” he told the AFR.

In the same six-month period, the ABS reported 16.2 million mobile handset subscribers in Australia, an increase of 7 per cent from 15.2 million.

Meanwhile, the volume of data downloaded via mobile handsets, for the three months ended 30 June, was 6,610 Terabytes, an increase of 32 per cent from the three months ended 31 December.